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Daily Archives: March 7, 2019

The movie-going audience has a bipolar relationship with Shyamalan. Once proclaimed “the next Spielberg”, he then went through a string of big budget failures, before making a resurgence in the past few years. Through all his highs-and-lows, Shyamalan has always made ambitious films, and Glass is no different. Here in his finale to his superhuman trilogy he does for superhero movies what Scream did for horror, lovingly recognizing its genre tendencies as benchmarks instead of clichés. It’s not quite as clever or urgent as it could be, but Glass, like a good comic book, still manages to strike an appropriate balance between admitted absurdity and unashamed sincerity. Following cult hits Unbreakable and Split, Glass finds Jackson’s titular mastermind once again (what else?) masterminding another bit of real-life comic book lore, pitting Willis’s hero against McAvoy’s villain. It’s a great tonal combination of the two previous films, though leaning heavier on the psychological superhero drama of Unbreakable. All about trauma, identity control and cultural elitism, it has as much intriguing philosophizing as it does action. By the end, it borders on being a Shyamalan mess, but its ambitions are too noble to write-off. What really makes Glass fly are the performances, especially from the central figures. Willis is fine, but McAvoy and Jackson are remarkable. Jackson is laying on just the right amount of ham to show that he’s having fun, while underlaying it with plenty of care, and McAvoy is like a magician, pulling off each internal character nearly simultaneously with equal parts comedy, pathos and horror. Some questionable story logic must be set aside, but I think it’s worth it for a superhero movie this abnormally bold.

If you had a friend who spoke to you in the same way you sometimes speak to yourself, how long would you allow that person to be your friend?

Status: good. finally feeling human. Maybe I’ll have a dry weekend for the one coming up. I wouldn’t mind feeling human throughout the whole week and not just at the end. Seems to have an effect on my productivity, or lack thereof.

Career.

Pulled the trigger on the return flight yesterday, which has made this Next Chapter feel a little more real, a little more official. There wasn’t an accompaniment of anxiety, so perhaps I’m getting used to the idea. Curious to see how I’m going to react on those first few steps at the beginning of the Next Chapter, how I’m going to feel about seeing old, familiar places which I left behind all those years ago. I’m hoping the experience doesn’t push me down into the depths of depression. If I can just make it to neutral with a hint of sadness, I’ll call that a win.

(All that said, it is a good opportunity and is a stepping stone to the Thing I Really Want. Need to keep reminding myself of that.)

Photography.

Toying with the idea of purchasing some better equipment. I don’t feel like I’m completely ready for it, but once I make the move it will be hard to source the equipment from there, and it’ll potentially be more expensive as well. If I wasn’t going anywhere I’d hold off a little bit longer because I still feel like I need to do some work on learning more about the compositional aspects of photography. It would be a real shame to shell out a small fortune for new equipment and then end up taking “holiday snaps” with it. That wouldn’t be very smart.

Still, better to plan ahead.

Writing.

I’m not so much procrastinating as I am stuck on the next step. I hate the self-loathing which accompanies the lack of productivity. Something else to get my head around. Another lesson to learn. Need to pick myself up, dust myself off and try again. But without the internal invective directed at myself.